Closed Doors and Shuttered Windows
by kenzimone
Summary: After Becky leaves San Francisco for New York, DJ finds herself nursing a different kind of crush.


**Title**: Closed Doors and Shuttered Windows  
**Author**: kenzimone**  
Fandom**: Full House**  
Rating**: PG-13**  
Disclaimer**: Don't own.**  
Summary**: After Becky leaves San Francisco for New York, DJ finds herself nursing a different kind of crush.**  
Warnings/****Notes**: Apart from being rather old (written in May of 2006 and forgotten about until I found it again this weekend), this fic contains one-sided Jesse/DJ. If that's not your cup of tea, I suggest you stop reading now.

* * *

...

Becky left on a Tuesday morning, as DJ watched from one of the upstairs windows.

It had been raining softly all night, a steady January rain that created deep puddles of water along the curb of the street. It wasn't even eight o'clock yet when Becky descended the stairs and hurried to climb inside the cab waiting for her, escaping the light drizzle that still yet pelted the pavement. The car started rolling even before its door slammed shut, and DJ watched as it disappeared down the street.

Stephanie pulled a sweater on over her head and paused, throwing her sister a look. Ever curious, she pawed over to the window, peering out through the glass in search of whatever had so thoroughly caught DJ's attention.

"What are you looking at?"

"It's raining."

Stephanie frowned, taking in the dull outdoor scene. "Oh." Quickly growing bored she withdrew to her bed, settling down with Mr. Bear and continued to watch her older sister stare out at the rain.

...

Jesse broke the news over dinner.

"Becky got offered a great job in New York, and she had to leave this morning. She sends her love. Pass the bread will you, Danny?"

His nonchalant delivery startled DJ more than the actual announcement did, and she risked a glance at her dad. Judging by the look on his face, he'd known this tidbit for some time. Joey, however, on DJ's right, sat with his mouth open in a comical pose, his fork frozen just inches from his face. He looked as surprised as Jesse looked nonchalant. The tension was broken by a loud squeal from Michelle, who seemed oblivious to it all, despite Stephanie's desperate attempts to shush her.

Danny reached for the bread basket, pausing to give his brother in law a pointed look. "And?"

Now it was Jesse's turn to look confused. "And what?"

DJ watched her father hold on to the basket, seemingly not at all intending to pass it on to her uncle, despite the latter's outstretched hand. "And, what about you?"

"What about me?" Jesse was growing irritated, a stiffness invading his jaw the way it usually did when he felt cornered and uncomfortable.

"I…" Danny glanced at the rest of the family, none of who were eating but instead following the conversation intently. "I was under the impression that you were going with her."

"Going with her? To New York?" Jesse snatched the bread basket from his dubious looking brother in law. "Danny, my life's here. I've got no business in New York."

DJ looked down at her plate, throat constricting at the false certainty in his reply.

Danny lowered his voice, aware of the large eyes of Stephanie and Michelle as they watched his every move. "But you're engaged…" He trailed off, eyebrows raised.

DJ stood, her chair making an unpleasantly loud noise against the floor as it was pushed back. "Dad, maybe I should take Stephanie and Michelle upstairs and-" She cut herself off when Jesse waved his hand, as if discarding her offer.

"No need, Deej." Facing Danny again, he replied, "We broke it off. Long distance relationships and all that. Never works. Besides," he turned to Michelle, who had been chewing on her plastic spoon as she watched him intently and now giggled happily as he pressed a kiss to her forehead. "How could I leave my girls?"

Stephanie also seemed pleased by these words, and returned her attention to her cooling spaghetti. Danny looked as if he wanted to say more on the subject but didn't, taking a cue from his daughter.

They ate the rest of the meal in a silence broken only by Stephanie's tales of dance class and Michelle's soft and incoherent interruptions.

...

Jesse disappeared upstairs after dinner, taking Michelle with him. DJ spent five minutes in the kitchen watching her father and Stephanie clear off the table before she decided she'd had enough of the former's somber face and the latter's incessant jabbering. Soon after a jittery Joey slipped downstairs to his room she followed his example and headed upstairs. She found Jesse in his bedroom, watching his youngest niece place open palmed strikes to the keys of his keyboard.

"Uncle Jesse?"

He turned and smiled, "Deej. Hey."

She accepted his reply for the invitation it was and entered the room, closing the door after her. "So…" she said, uncertain where to start.

"So…" he echoed, smiling encouragingly as Michelle turned to look at him for approval. "What's on your mind, Deej?"

"Becky's not coming back, is she?"

It took him a while to answer, and for a moment she thought he hadn't heard her over the sour notes her sister was producing by the instrument.

"No, she's not." He suddenly seemed tired, rubbing his eyes with one hand while the other steadied Michelle as she balanced on the edge of the bed. "She's got family in Illinois, so coming here in the first place was hard on her; she's a lot closer to them now. Nothing here worth coming back for, really."

"There's you."

It might have been the wrong thing to say, or the right thing to say too soon, but he shot her the first real smile she'd seen all day; a bordering on painful one, but a smile nonetheless. "Do you miss her?"

DJ sensed that the tables had been turned, and the subject changed, but she complied with his wishes. "Yeah, I guess." His bed spread was soft, and she ran her hand over it, finding a loose thread. "I would have liked knowing her a little better," she thought aloud, fiddling with the thread. "But I liked her, and I'll miss her. It was nice to have another woman in the house. For a while, at least."

She must have sounded sad, because he put his arm around her and leaned in, touching his forehead to hers. "I hadn't thought about that," he murmured, sending puffs of air across her cheek. "Can't be much fun growing up in a house with three old and totally clueless geezers in charge."

She would have protested, had she not seen the teasing spark in his eyes, and instead let her lips quirk upwards.

"But, you turned out just fine," he continued, the sincerity in his voice making her smile for real. "No thanks to us, I guess. I'm sorry about Becky, but I think you'll be fine anyway."

She shook her head, "No, _I'm_ sorry."

The teasing spark reappeared. "I guess we'll have to get Joey a girlfriend, so that you can have someone to bond with again."

She laughed and allowed him to pull her into a one armed hug, to place a kiss on the side of her head. She inhaled, detecting the faint smell of aftershave, and surprised herself with the feeling of a familiar hotness spreading across her cheeks, cheered on by a quickening heartbeat. She shivered slightly, and for a moment she worried that it might earn her a questioning glance before she realized that Jesse had already released her and was showering Michelle in attention as the three year old demanded he play a song for her.

DJ left the room quietly, hiding her blushing cheeks behind curtains of hair.

...

Any doubts as to if Jesse was serious about not following Becky to New York were banished over the next few days. Danny seemed worried, albeit happy, as Stephanie and Michelle delighted in finding new ways to make their uncle laugh. DJ watched it all with new eyes and a smile on her face.

It was all innocent enough, how suddenly the sound of his laughter sometimes made her heart skip a beat.

The interests of teenage girls were fleeting, DJ knew. There was so much to do, so much to _experience_, that certain things had to be pushed aside in favour of other, at the time seemingly more important, things. It was not for nothing people said that teenage girls got the strangest ideas.

And it was the perfectly logical solution, DJ thought. She was a teenage girl. She had some strange ideas, whereof one was something growing and spreading into something more than the platonic love she was rightly entitled to feel for a family member. Like a realm had been transcended, and the simple act had had an earthquake like effect on her life.

But then again, some girls dreamt of growing up to marry their fathers. This was basically the same thing. Of course, DJ was on the right side of seven years old, but had _they_ grown out of it, surely would she.

It would all pass in due time.

...

Two months later, and she watched him leave for his first date since Becky left San Francisco. The girl in question was a pretty thing, long legged and curly haired, dressed in a fitting black dress, and she gave him a kiss on the cheek in a way of greeting. It was the first time DJ suspected that she might be in over her head, when she called Kimmy near tears, asking if she was in the mood for a sleepover.

...

Fridays soon saw Jesse coming and going, the same girl ringing the doorbell each evening, the same kiss hello. Sandra Johnson was her name, and Jesse dated her for six weeks. DJ wanted to hate her but couldn't. Somehow that made it hurt even worse.

"I think Jesse's back to normal," she spoke out into the dark one night, when both she and Stephanie should have been asleep.

"Mmm." The sound of covers rearranging from her sister's bed. "_Uncle_ Jesse."

"What?"

"It's _Uncle_ Jesse. He's our uncle." Stephanie couldn't see DJ's expression in the dark.

"Whatever."

She spent two hours staring at the night light in the corner before she fell asleep.

...

'Uncle' was an ugly moniker, she decided. Uncles were old and worn and nothing like him. She decided to never call him that again, and spent the next few Friday nights lying awake in bed until well past two AM, when the front door opened and closed and footsteps made their way up the stairs. She could sleep only when she saw the sliver of light underneath the bedroom door flicker and die out.

...

Soon enough, mornings found DJ locking herself in the bathroom, the fluorescent lights painting an unflattering picture as she leaned over the sink to examine her face.

Thirteen. That was the number and thought that had suddenly struck her, and what she told herself mattered. It was what it all came down to; thirteen years of age difference and the fact that he had helped her nurse the sorrows of her first fourth grade crush in cookie dough ice cream.

She chose to ignore the more obvious, to ignore the thousands of reasons floating around her head why this was all so wrong, and aren't you a silly girl with a silly crush, DJ?

Sick sick _sick_.

Thirteen years, and a tub of ice cream.

Her hands were shaking when she finally unlocked the door and turned off the lights, to the relief of a waiting Stephanie.

...

Kimmy proclaimed her best friend's recent bout of sad countenance a direct result of 'boy trouble' and took her out shopping. While Kimmy tried on shoes, DJ subtracted thirteen from twenty nine.

...

The growing, spreading, _mutating_ feeling was teething, DJ thought, and it hurt. She was level headed enough to recognize the usual symptoms of a crush, only she would loathe to call it that. Sometimes she thought that maybe it was the secret itself that was eating her up inside. Because a secret it was, and a secret she was going to keep it. For as long as it took. Huge, numbing and _sick_. She would never tell.

...

And she didn't, because it wasn't all that hard. Not really. Teenage girls might have strange ideas, but they're marvellous actresses. Just as long as no touch or gaze lingered too long, she might even fool herself into believing she'd succeeded.

One year; three hundred and sixty five days; eight thousand sixty minutes; three million five hundred and thirty six thousand seconds. Eternity had never before been summed up in so few words.

And then she met Adam.

He was nineteen, a little more than one year older than she, and tall with short blond hair and warm, brown eyes. For a while she felt like a normal teenage girl, with a boyfriend who would walk her to class and carry her books, and who she could invite over to her house for study sessions that would turn into cuddling on the couch.

As two uncles and a father guarded by the sidelines, ever ready to step in should there be need for it, DJ felt genuine happiness.

It took Adam seven months to catch on.

...

She didn't know what she'd done to make him realize, if maybe she'd stared too long or smiled too much, but he put two and two together and reacted just as she thought he might.

"That's _disgusting_, DJ." And he did look disgusted, a sneer painted on his face and a stiffness in his frame that she hadn't seen before. "Disgusting."

"I'm sorry," she sniffled, surprising even herself because no matter how many times she'd pictured this scenario, she'd never expected herself to cry.

Adam was pacing now, and for once she was glad that they were at his house, in his room, because with all the noise he was making there would have been three very protective men rushing up the stairs had this scene ended up taking place in her home.

"How long have this been going on? Huh?" He whirled around, pointing to himself and the look in his eyes all but made her turn away. "What am _I_ to you? Did you just string me along?"

She couldn't take it any more; she let her gaze drop to the floor.

"Answer me! _How long_?" His hands were on her shoulders now, and standing by the bed he towered over her sitting form. There was no way she couldn't reply.

"Almost two years."

He seemed to deflate, to turn in on himself, and slowly sank down onto the bed beside her. Neither said anything for a while, DJ crying silently and Adam sitting hunched over, staring at his hands.

Then she rose, shakily, reaching for her backpack. She had to get moving, her mind told her. Get out, go home, try to forget anyone had ever found out this one secret she'd been so adamant to keep, yet unable to actually do so.

She must have looked a sight; mascara leaving trails down her cheeks, eyes puffy and red; a small girl, clutching her backpack as if it was the lifeline that'd keep her from drifting out to sea.

She felt dirty.

"Are— Are you going to tell…?" It was hard to talk when your throat felt constricted.

His laugh made her flinch, and when he looked up at her she had to force herself to meet his eyes. "No. Because who would believe me? This is sick. All of it. So damn disgusting." He pursed his lips. "_You're_ disgusting."

Numbness invaded her body. "I'll find my own way out." Her body was on autopilot; her legs carrying her towards the door, her hand reaching out for the handle.

Adam apparently wasn't finished yet; "Good luck, Deej. I hope you and your uncle are _real_ happy together."

She shut the door and stumbled down the stairs, his sarcasm cutting its way into her skin.

...

What she had really wanted to do was to sneak inside undetected, make her way up to her room and go to bed early. To spend the night crying silently into her pillow so that Stephanie wouldn't hear, to bemoan the mess that was her life.

Her body betrayed her though; by the time she'd made it to the front door her hands were shaking so bad it took her four tries to unlock it. It shut with a loud bang behind her, and by then she was crying again, stumbling into the arms of a Joey who found himself at the wrong place at the wrong time.

She tried to tell him that she wanted to be alone, and would he please let her go, but she couldn't produce more than faint sobs, and so he led her to the couch and enveloped her in a hug. She clung to him despite herself, welcoming the comfort and the hand that stroked her hair in a slow motion.

It was only when another hand touched her shoulder, another voice wondered what was wrong, that she tore herself away and ran upstairs, leaving two concerned uncles in her wake.

...

Two hours later, when she felt that she couldn't cry another tear, Jesse appeared with a tub of ice cream and two spoons. She sunk into his embrace, fingers digging into his t-shirt, as the ice cream melted beside them.


End file.
